Do you write your website content to rank on page 1 of Google or do you write it to drive sales from your visitors? Don’t worry. I’m here to tell you that you can have your cake, and get your fork, because you can eat it too.

It is absolutely possible to write website content that ranks well in search engines and sells like a dream. The key is planning and achieving a perfect balance between the two objectives.

Let’s start with how to write for search engines.

If you’ve done any research into SEO, you’ve learned that in order to rank high in Google, you need good content. But what does that mean? It means volume, quality and lots of juicy keywords.

Start at the Beginning: Listing Your Keywords

Before you do anything else, create your list of keywords. A “keyword” is a word or term that customers are likely to use in a search when looking for your business. Don’t go crazy. Choose your “Big 5”, the top five terms you’d love to rank for.

For example, I want Amalgam Design’s Search Engine Optimization landing page to rank when business owners are looking to optimize their company websites. The keywords I want to rank for might be: Search Engine Optimization Toronto, SEO company, SEO firm, Search Engine Optimization agency Canada, and Google ranking.

Don’t forget to include location keywords (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, etc.) because customers search on location. If I’m looking for a plumber, if I don’t put “Toronto” in my search terms, the #1 result could be from Texas. Google has recently updated its search to always provide location based results (it knows where you live), but users still put cities and countries in their search terms so you should include them in your content.

When I’m writing content for a website, I put my keywords in a list and keep them at the top of my draft as I’m writing. This reminds me of what terms to lace into the copy. I write as naturally as possible, writing what I want to say about the product or service and I periodically reread my keyword terms. Where possible, I’ll use a full keyword phrase in the copy, and if I can’t do that, I’ll add an extra word into the content to achieve better ranking.

For example, if I’ve written the sentence, “Amalgam Design offers SEO as part of our web design services,” I might edit it to say, “Amalgam Design offers search engine optimization for Google as part of our SEO web design services.” In this case, it didn’t break the flow of the sentence too much and I was able to insert 2 more keywords into my copy.

Try to keep keyword terms together whenever possible but consider splitting them into single words where you can because Google looks at your entire page of content. That is, if I can’t fit “Toronto SEO company” naturally into my copy, it’s okay to just say “Toronto” as long as “SEO” and “company” are also somewhere else on the page.

Don’t forget that questions can be keywords. Many users treat Google like an oracle and may enter “How do I make my website rank in Google?” as their search terms. Consider making questions part of your content but remember that questions don’t communicate the solution which is what you are trying to sell, so use them sparingly.

Where to Use Your Keywords

Google puts more emphasis on headings and links than on body text. Consider working your keywords into your headings and menu links where you can as well as your meta titles. I don’t just say “Services” when I can say “SEO Services”.

Don’t bother filling your keywords meta tags with your favourites because all major search engines ignore this meta tag as a result of abuse. Similarly, search engines don’t care what you put in your meta description but users sure do (this is the blurb that shows up in your Google listing) so make it as sales driven as possible! The only meta tag that Google cares about is the meta title (the title that shows up at the top of your browser window).

Don’t Stuff It, Sell It

Yes, you are writing your content with search engines in mind, but you must always write your content for users, not for bots. Why? Because you could drive an army of users to your site through SEO but you’ve accomplished nothing if they don’t buy anything.

This is why you should never use keyword stuffing to rank. Keyword stuffing is a popular SEO tactic where you use as many of your keywords as many times as possible in a paragraph. This copy is clearly not written for users and can be confusing to potential customers.

Using our Toronto SEO company example, here’s what bad keyword stuffed content reads like: Toronto SEO company, Amalgam Design is an affordable Toronto SEO (search engine optimization) company that will get your website ranking in Google and other major search engines. A Toronto SEO company since 1999, Amalgam Design makes your website search engine optimized.

This kind of keyword spamming (or stuffing) works sometimes to achieve rank but certainly doesn’t sell anything to anybody and leaves your visitors wondering why you’re talking to them like they are an idiot.

Writing To Sell

Identifying your unique selling point is Marketing 101. So when you are writing sales copy for a website, you must keep that in the forefront.

With our Amalgam Design SEO company example, our unique selling point is that we are marketers, and can write killer sales copy and create beautiful designs that achieve awesome ranking in Google. So that has to drive my message.

Here is a rewrite of the previous example, this time using sales driven good keyword content: Amalgam Design is a Toronto based company that loves ethical SEO. We create stunning search engine optimized designs and use proven sales driven content to get you ranking in Google and other major search engines.

While, technically, the first example uses the keywords more often, Google finds keyword stuffing fishy and my primary goal is to convince potential customers that they should hire us.

Know Where To Draw the Line

Customers always win. If it becomes clear that I have to choose between writing for a customer and writing for Google, I’ll always err on the side of sales. I’ll choose a pithy heading over a keyword laden one any day. Why? Because clients like it. There are many marketing channels driving users to our website. While search may be the biggest, it hurts our overall revenue if in the end we’re nothing more than Google groupies.

Search engines update themselves all the time, changing what they look for in a good site. If you create your site for users, you’ll never be left holding a bag of useless, outdated tricks.

Take some time to investigate landing pages and you’ll see that close to 100% of results will be talking about using stand alone web pages to drive conversions coming from email or sponsored listings. The purpose of these landing pages is to “Buy Today!” and “Sign Up Now!” –  to convert every visitor into a buyer. Often these pages don’t even link to the main website. Its entire reason to exist is to sell.

I want to talk about the other kind of landing page – the kind that is built for search engines. The purpose of these pages is to earn a high organic ranking for a specific product or service. This gets you click throughs from organic search engine results that lead directly to your website.

Because Landing Page Topics are Targeted, They Rank Well

Imagine you run a hair salon and under your “Services” page you list all the cuts and styles you specialize in. This serves you fine for customers looking for “Hair Salon Services” as their search terms. But what about people searching on “up do” for their upcoming formal event? If you have a page dedicated to everything you’d ever want to know about up do’s, you have a shot at pulling in those customers.

This is what the experts mean when they say Google loves great content. Position yourself as an expert, not through empty claims, but by informing the world about your knowledge area.

You Can’t Cheat The Keywords

You can throw as many keywords as you want into a random paragraph in the footer of your website but Google sees you. Google looks at the context around your keywords and when it sees a full page dedicated to useful original content on one keyword topic it says, “Hot damn! That’s what I’m talking about!” A well written landing page will always outrank a keyword storm.

Don’t Forget About Making the Sell

Just because the purpose of our landing pages is to inform (and therefore rank) doesn’t mean they doesn’t have to sell as well. Your landing pages need to include call outs about buying the product or service from you. Putting these in the sidebar is ideal. The up do page for our hair salon could have call outs like, “Up Do’s in Only 1 Hour”, “Call Us Today”, “Walk Ins Welcome”, or “Call For a Free Consultation”.

Other Uses: Landing Pages for PR and Social Media Campaigns

Try writing a landing page on a high profile project or client and create online buzz by driving traffic to it from your PR and social media campaigns. Not only can the page rank for your keywords, but it gives you more content to Tweet and Facebook about!

You, The Expert

Remember, it’s not so much about ranking on page 1 of Google or converting every visit into a sale. It’s all part of the bigger marketing build. You want to show every visitor that YOU are the industry expert, the go-to guy, the one to watch. Landing pages show the world why you are an industry God and why everyone else is just a hack.